


I say someone in another time will remember us

by smaragdbird



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Kissing, M/M, Poetry, author ships Fitzjames with everyone, making out while reading poetry, sturdy furniture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 17:35:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17411261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/pseuds/smaragdbird
Summary: Written for Day 5: “a private performance” of the 12 days of CarnivalFitzjames interrupts de Voeux when he's reading some poetry





	I say someone in another time will remember us

**Author's Note:**

> Sappho's quotes come from "Six Fragments for Atthis"

The wardroom was empty save for Charles when James returned from his customary evening round of the ship. As usual he was sitting in a corner, deeply engrossed in his book and the scene was so familiar that for a moment James felt as if they were back on the Cornwallis.

He knew that Charles hated to be interrupted when he was reading but they were also alone and James wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. 

He walked up to Charles and snatched the book from his hands, quirking an eyebrow at the title. “I have a feeling you didn’t get this from the ship’s library.”

Charles returned the look without shame. “You’d know best, sir. You made the inventory list, though I was sad there is no copy of Chrononhotonthologos on board.”

“And why would that be?” James put his fingers under Charles’ chin and used his thumb to caress his bottom lip. Charles caught the tip of it between his teeth for a moment before answering.  
“I was hoping for a private performance”, Charles replied. His brazen, unashamed attitude had always appealed to James ever since their time on the Cornwallis. “I’ve heard you speak so much about your role as Queen Fadladinida that I’m sorry I hadn’t known you back then.”

“Which role would you be playing then?” James fingers dropped down to Charles’ throat, caressing the thin skin, feeling the vibrations when he answered.

“The Queen’s courtier though I’d change the ending. I would not refuse your hand, to be at your command day and night and yet command you at the same time, the way a husband does to his wife”, Charles snatched James’ hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it.

James laughed softly under his breath and sat down on Charles’ lap.

“Perhaps I can give you a different performance, then”, he whispered as he leaned in so close that Charles could feel the words on his skin as he said them.

“I’d be much obliged, sir”, Charles replied, eyes glancing longingly at James’ lips, wrapping his arms around James’ waist. To his surprise though, James leaned back and opened the book he had taken from Charles earlier. Skimming the page, he settled on a poem and began to read.

“And once, when you'd plaited a double necklace  
from a hundred blooms, I tied it around  
the swanning, sun-licked ring of your neck. “

“You recite poetry better than you write it”, Charles said dryly, before pressing his lips to James’ neck.

“Cruise on the HMS Cornwallis was a masterpiece”, James protested, tilting his head to give Charles more space. “I should have you flogged for the insolence.”

“Or you could keep reading and I make you forget all about my remarks”, Charles suggested, pressing the heel of his hand against James’ crotch.

“And on more than one occasion (there were two  
of them, to be exact), while I looked on, too  
silent with adoration to say your name,  
you glazed your breasts and arms with oil.”

“That’s something I’d like to see”, Charles murmured between the kisses he was pressing to James’ neck, his hand rubbing in a steady rhythm over the front of James’ trousers. 

“Would your adoration be silent, too?” James asked teasingly.

“If I thought there were words to describe you, I would’ve filled page after page with them already and published them for the world to see you as I do?” He licked his lips as his eyes found James’.

“Flattery from your lips, how unusual.”

“It’s not flattery if it’s the truth.” They were so close that James could feel the words as much as he heard them. But instead of closing the distance between them, instead of their lips meeting Charles nudged him slightly and said, “Keep reading.”

“No holy place existed without us then,  
no woodland, no dance, no sound. “

James however was not a man who denied himself pleasure that was at the tips of his fingers and he twisted on Charles’ lap and wound a hand into his hair before kissing him like a man starving. He could feel Charles’ arm tighten around his waist and while the hand rubbing him through his trousers never faltered, it was not enough. He wanted to get up and take them to his cabin, wanted to be pushed down by Charles and ravished like they were back in Singapore, drunk on alcohol and life.

Charles though clearly had a different idea when he broke the kiss and repeated his words, this time with an edge in his tone that made it sound like a command and sent a shiver down Fitzjames’ spine.

“Beyond all hope, I prayed those timeless  
days we spent might be made twice as long.”

His breath hitched when unexpectedly Charles slipped his hand under his shirt and touched his bare skin, just for a moment, though, a taste of things to come.

“Is that why you brought me to this place, where days and nights are endless?” Charles asked.

“You volunteered.”

“I could no more refuse you without divine intervention than Odysseus could refuse Kalypso.”

James opened the books once more, he had read the next line already, so he kept his eyes on Charles’ face instead when he said, 

“I prayed one word: I want.”

This time it was Charles who seized his lips in a kiss, wilder than before, and this side of Charles, the uninhibited, unashamed desire was what had first drawn James to him. He did not remember how they made it to the bed but he remembered that he kept holding onto the book for some reason until Charles drew his waistcoat over his shoulders and it fell to the ground, forgotten as they freed each other from their clothes.

There were no words to describe the depth of desire in Charles’ dark eyes when he pushed James down on the sheets. No poetry could give voice to the feeling of them moving against each other, skin against skin, their fingers laced as James arched his back, desperate, wanting Charles to be closer, to melt into one another so this would never have to end.

Afterwards when they lay on top of each other for the lack of space and the lack of desire to be apart, Charles reached down and picked the book up again.

“Someone, I tell you, will remember us,  
even in another time. “

**Author's Note:**

> Sappho wasn't exactly controversial in Victorian times but I've already used the Chrononhotonthologos for Day 1, so here we are
> 
> Silly headcanon: De Voeux is so grumpy in the show because no one lets him read in peace


End file.
